The three risks to be avoided ” “

In less than fifty years the European Union has become the second global player after the USA. In this context it is particularly important to reflect on the challenges involving the education of the new generations with a view to forming fully responsible citizens in present-day and future society. This is the objective pursued by the book “Formare l’uomo europeo” (Forming the European man) written by ANGELO VINCENZO ZANI and published in Italy by Città Nuova. The book presents the educational problems that have gradually entered the agenda of the European institutions over the years, and examines the efforts devoted to this field by educationalists of Christian inspiration and by the teaching of the Catholic Church from Vatican Council II to the present day. Former professor at the “Paul VI” institute in Brescia and the Institute of Religious Sciences of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Zani was for several years Director of the National Office for education, schools and universities of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. He has been under-secretary of the Holy See’s Congregation for Catholic Education since 2002. THE RISK OF EDUCATION BEING CRUSHED BY THE ECONOMY. In a context in which “the principle of economic integration is the motor of the complex phenomenon of globalization” the first risk run by education today is that of being, so to say, “crushed” within the economy. This is the basic thesis maintained by Zani who invites reflection on the fact that the criterion “of economic irrelevance” tends to be reflected also in the field of educational choices: “a person is economically irrelevant if his way of acting and doing do not concur to the process of producing the wealth of the society of which he forms part”. Zani speaks in substance of a “new form of utilitarianism” which, if applied to the field of education, means that learning is not considered as a value in itself and for itself, but as subservient to the needs of the production system. “An obsession with utility – he explains – leads to the wish to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of educational processes, so that everything that falls outside such a logic seems to have no relevance”. For this reason the author asserts that “it is easy in our present-day cultural horizon for utilitarian disciplines to prevail over those that place the emphasis on human values within the educational processes in which the new generations are being formed”. So the third risk, after that of economic utilitarianism, identified by the author is that of a “new hierarchization of knowledge”. “The crushing of education within the economy and neo-utilitarianism – writes Zani – may have the effect of organizing knowledge according to a hierarchy extrinsic to the value and the significance that the transmission of knowledge has in itself, and hence of responding to the specific needs of society”. AN INTEGRAL FORMATION AS ANTIDOTE. Contrary to this logic, Zani supports the thesis that “the educational question today cannot be restricted to problems of an economic nature alone: on the contrary, it must be able to address the challenges posed by it to be better able to form men and women who are able responsibly to assume their condition as citizens in the planetary era”. That’s why, according to Zani, “education, while it indubitably requires a social recognition and must demonstrate its utility, also claims a value that transcends the specific sectorial field and responds to more general problems that have to do with the relation between the individual and society”. In other words, “the educational experience plays an extremely important role today, because it allows the sense of values to be developed and meanings to be attributed to the realities we know and experience”. That leads to the need to “reverse the fundamental perspective”: “whereas in the logic of utilitarianism the main concern is to transmit those branches of knowledge that are considered useful, from the point of view of education – so argues the author – it is the processes of interiorization, critical re-elaboration and personal reconstruction of knowledge that are the paramount interest”. The educational system today thus has the task of permitting a wider perspective, through “a transdisciplinary approach able gradually to lead to disciplinary field of knowledge”. That is the reason why, faced by the risk of the fragmentation of knowledge, “the education of general character given to a person must always precede and accompany specialist education”. For “an effective existential outlook can only be achieved in the presence of a general education and only thus can the sense of humanity and knowledge for life be communicated”.